Read Online Endangered Species by Barbara Block - Free Book Online

reptiles and give a talk. I’d said sure, no problem. She’d called back the next day. And now I had to face a class full of thirty twelve-year-olds. I was not looking forward to this.
    I stopped at a 7-Eleven and got two jelly doughnuts for Zsa Zsa and a couple of glazed doughnuts and a large coffee for myself before heading to the store. Tim was already there when I arrived.
    â€œWhat are you planning on taking?” he asked.
    After a fair amount of thinking, I’d come up with four specimens that wouldn’t hurt the kids or be hurt by them. “One of the pythons.” The Burmese I was thinking about was fairly docile and at seven feet was large enough so he could be handled without being stressed out. “Iggy the Iguana.” He loved people and would curl up on your shoulders whenever he could. The people who had him had moved overseas and hadn’t been able to take him along and I’d been trying to find a good home for him. “One of the monitors.” The one we had in the store was four feet long, with impressive claws and a tail that could inflict serious damage. People liked them because they looked like dinosaurs. In fact, in the fifties, filmmakers had used them as stand-ins.
    â€œHow about a corn snake?” Tim suggested.
    I nodded. “That was my last choice.” A native Southwest snake, they were not only fairly sturdy, but with their yellow and red coloring, attractive as well.
    â€œHave fun,” Tim said as I packed the four reptiles up in newspaper-lined cloth bags, newspaper being great insulating material, because the one thing that you can’t do with reptiles is let them get cold.
    â€œWho knows? Maybe this could be the start of a new career,” I said as I left.
    Things began well. The kids gasped when I took the python out of its bag. I told them how they eat and how you can keep them in your house and how their skin really feels dry and what marvels of evolutionary efficiency they are. Then I invited anyone who wanted to, to come up and touch him. After some hesitation about ten kids did. Next I talked about Iggy and about how iguanas were good lizards to start out with if you were interested in owning one, because they weren’t as fussy about their eating habits as some other lizards were. They eat a wide variety of fruits and vegetables and seemed to be able to withstand more variations in temperature. The corn snake went well, too. Even the girls liked him, because he was pretty.
    When I took out the monitor, one of the kids in the front row said, “Wow, he looks like a Komodo dragon.”
    â€œI guess you watch the Discovery Channel.”
    The kid smiled.
    â€œHe does look very similar. He comes from the same family, except he’s not on the CITES list.” And I went into the little speech I’d prepared. “Every year, thousands and thousands of animals die thanks to the wildlife black market. Many species are in danger of being wiped out. Some, like the Komodo dragon attract attention because they’re so dramatic, but others, like beetles and butterflies, don’t.” By now the lizard was moving his head around trying to bite me. I moved my right hand further down his back away from his mouth and made sure I had a good grip on his underbelly with my left hand. Then I turned him around so they could get a good look at his tail, which was whipping back and forth. “Now if he was bigger,” I told him, “his tail could really hurt you.” I lifted him up a little and indicated his claws with a nod of my chin. “And these could send you to the hospital with stitches.”
    The kid who’d spoken before leaned forward. “How can I get a Komodo dragon?”
    â€œYou can’t and you wouldn’t want one. CITES species are protected under international law.” I was about to say more when the monitor lizard did something I’d only read about. When monitors get nervous